RULE TWO … for a Better Way to Live
Today, and every day, deliver more than you are getting paid to do. The victory of success will be half won when you learn the secret of putting out more than is expected in all that you do. Make yourself so valuable in your work that eventually you will become indispensable. Exercise your privilege to go the extra mile and enjoy all the rewards you receive. You deserve them!
I thoroughly enjoy browsing through all the humorous greeting cards that seem to be getting more and more rack space in most card shops, and I probably send out more of them than I should. My all-time favorite was the oversize card with an engraved border that looked like a stock certificate on which were embossed the words “How to Make Money.” Inside there were just three words, in a brilliant Day-Glo orange: GO TO WORK!
Everything in life has its price, and unless you belong to that tiny elite who have had everything handed to them since birth, I’m afraid the only way you can pay for the things you want and need and dream about is with the compensation you receive for the work you do.
You’re nodding in agreement, but you don’t look happy. Struggling to stay ahead of the bills? Not making much progress or growth in that job, and you’ve already been at it much too long without any advancement? You’d like a new house but can’t afford it? Same with that clunker you’re driving? Your life seems to be on a holding pattern; how do you get off the treadmill?
There is an answer, a solution, a rule, and I’ll wager that it has never failed for those who have truly applied it. When it comes to improving the career side of your life, the greatest secret of success was delivered to us from a mountaintop, nearly two thousand years ago, when Jesus told us that if we were compelled to go a mile with someone, we should always go two. The extra mile.
If you resolve, beginning tomorrow, to put out more on your job than you’re getting paid to do, miracles will begin happening in your life. Whatever you are doing for a living, whether you’re selling products, painting houses, manning computers, or sweeping floors—if, each day, you do more than you’re getting paid for, your life’s pattern will soon change for the better.
The most certain way to condemn yourself to a life of failure and tears is by doing only the work covered by your paycheck. Of course, putting out more than you’re expected to deliver will not make you very popular with some of your peers who seem to make a career out of doing as little as possible for their pay … but that’s their problem, not yours. You live your life. There are people who are depending on you. When you give more than you’re getting paid to give, every day, you will not only promote yourself, but by being indispensable you will discover, to your surprise, that new opportunities are all around you, and eventually you’ll be able to write your own price tag. Such a simple rule. Go another mile! Won’t cost you a cent, and yet it’s so powerful that when you follow it, you will change your life forever.
Andrew Carnegie said that there were two types of people who never achieve very much in their lifetime. One is the person who won’t do what he or she is told to do, and the other is the person who does no more than he or she is told to do. And when Walter Chrysler was asked what his plant needed most, he replied, “Ten good men who can’t hear the whistle blow or read the time on the face of the clock.”
Surprise everyone. Change your work habits. Go the extra mile! This does not mean sacrificing your family or your health in an insane drive for success, but it is a marvelous method for you to extract all that life has to offer and all you deserve. Work as though you would live forever, and live as though you would die today. Go another mile!
RULE TWO … for a Better Way to Live
Today, and every day, deliver more than you are getting paid to do. The victory of success will be half won when you learn the secret of putting out more than is expected in all that you do. Make yourself so valuable in your work that eventually you will become indispensable. Exercise your privilege to go the extra mile, and enjoy all the rewards you receive. You deserve them!